Frank Gaffney: Turkey Part of Same Enterprise as ISIS

As the Islamic State (ISIS) advances toward the Syrian Kurdish border town of Kobani, and refugees flee into Turkey, which joined the coalition in the fight against the militant group, Frank Gaffney, Jr. says the Turks have similar goals as ISIS.

"What Turkey is up to is part and partial of the same enterprise that the Islamic State is about," Gaffney, the former Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy under former President Ronald Reagan, told Ed Berliner on "MidPoint" on Newsmax TV Friday.

"There are differences about who exactly should be the caliph," he explained.

"Prime minister, now [Turkish President Recep] Erdogan has over the past 10 or 11 years made unmistakably clear he is as firmly committed to the triumph of this doctrine or ideology or program (call it what you will) that they describe as Sharia, as is for that matter, not just the Islamic State or ISIS or ISIL, but al-Qaeda, the Taliban, Boko Haram al-Shabaab, Ansar al-Sharia and so on," he said.

"I don't think this is really so much about disagreements as to whether [Asyrian President] Bashar al-Assad needs to be overthrown and we need to put boots on the ground to accomplish that as much as it is that the Turks who have been enabling ISIS and other jihadists to come into Syria are actually on their side much more they are on ours," he contends.

"The trouble is that it doesn't begin to describe the magnitude of the problem," he added.

There are also similar problems with some of the other Middle Eastern countries, Gaffney, founder and president of the Center for Security Policy, says.

"We also have two other nations that we're told are on our side and are committed to defeating the Islamic State, namely Qatar and Saudi Arabia," he explained.

"Both of those nations, like Turkey, actually line up very much on the same side in terms of Sharia, in terms of the necessity of imposing it worldwide, in terms of the idea that there should be a caliphate to rule the world, according to Sharia," he said.

"These are not reliable allies," Gaffney contends.

"It's such a delusional maleficence on the part of the administration to suggest otherwise," he added.

He said that these facts are "being obscured by an awful lot of people who should know better," such as President Barack Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry, and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel.

As the Islamic State (ISIS) advances toward the Syrian Kurdish border town of Kobani, and refugees flee into Turkey, which joined the coalition in the fight against the militant group, Frank Gaffney, Jr. says the Turks have similar goals as ISIS.